Two days had passed since the combat that had turned the Arena upside down.

Lin Kai had fought on the second of those days, and his combat had been a good one. Entertaining, even, in the sense that it had carried real weight without ever quite tipping into a beating. He had won, and he had won well, but the win had cost him exchanges and posture and at least one moment in the middle of the third round where the Greenvein representative had nearly turned the floor on him. The Arena had applauded it was a applause that recognized work.

The bracket sat clean now. Lin Xuan against Su Qingyue on one side. Yan Wuji against Lin Kai on the other.

The rumor had already settled across the rings of Yuncheng before the day of the semifinals even arrived. Yan Wuji had walked into the final the moment Wen Liyang’s blade hit the polished stone. Anyone with eyes had seen the cut. The other bracket was the bracket that mattered. The other bracket was the one that had a question in it.

Lin Xuan against Su Qingyue.

The crowd was waiting on it the way crowds waited on things that did not have a clean answer in advance. The boy had cut a Stage Seven blade into three pieces from Stage Four. That was the line going around. Some had decided he had surprised Lei Yan. Some had decided Lei Yan had been distracted. Other simply said that Lei Yan was arrogant.

None of those excuses were going to apply to Su Qingyue. He had watched her. She had watched him. They had spent the last week of the tournament reading each other across the rings, and tomorrow the reading was over and the cut would happen.

It was going to be a memorable combat.

He knew that already.

He was walking through Yuncheng on the afternoon before it.

The streets had filled with their afternoon traffic, vendors and runners and small groups of disciples in robes from sects he did not recognize, and a number of locals had begun to call out his name as they passed.

A boy of maybe fourteen, in a workman’s apron, raised both fists to his chest in the formal greeting he had probably learned from his grandfather and held it there until Lin Xuan returned a small nod.

The crippled boy of Skyedge had become something else in the public mind in the span of six days.

He had not entirely decided how to feel about that yet.

What he had decided, as he walked, was that every young man and young woman who stepped within Mira’s range was getting a quiet scan in passing. He was not going to pretend that he had stopped being a recruiter just because he was on the way to a semifinal.

’Mira. When the tournament closes, I am going to spend a serious amount of time on the sect itself. The numbers might not look that alarming on paper, but I want to know the quality of the disciples coming up the ranks, the methods they are being trained with, the elders who are running each hall and the ones who are coasting. I might need to refresh the family roster.’

[ That is not as easy as you make it sound, Xuan. The elders of a sect carry weight that is older than most patriarchs. ]

’They are not above the patriarch though.’

[ No. Above the patriarch there is no one. ]

’Then there is room. Which means it is not the wall I have to plan against. We will see what we can do. Hand me something good from the daily reward while we walk.’

[ Allow me. ]

The panel arrived clean and gold-edged at the edge of his vision.

═══════════════════════════════

[ DAILY REWARD ]

═══════════════════════════════

[ ▸ Marrow Cleansing Elixir, low grade ]

[ ▸ Effect: refines the marrow of a Qi Gathering cultivator one stage further, suitable for breakthrough into Stage Six or below ]

[ ▸ Storage: granted to inventory ]

═══════════════════════════════

’Oh? That is better than the last few days have been giving me. I will not complain about that one.’

[ You can pass it to Wei Tianming. He is the one in your retinue who is going to get the most out of it. ]

’You are right. I will give it to him this evening when we are back at the residence.’

He was about to ask Mira whether the elixir would push Wei into the fifth stage before the semifinal week was over, the question half-formed in the back of his throat, when a voice cut into the line of his attention from the side of the lane and pulled the thought out of his head.

A voice that was light and low at once, the kind of voice that knew exactly how much it weighed and did not bother spending any of it.

He stopped walking.

He turned his head.

Su Qingyue stood three paces from him at the corner of the lane in a pale blue traveling robe that was less formal than her tournament dress, the cracked-ice clasp still in her hair, a small wrapped parcel of something hanging from her left hand by a paper string.

His opponent for tomorrow.

"Oh? Is that not my rival for tomorrow’s combat. You are not, by any chance, attempting to remove me from the bracket a day early."

The corner of her mouth lifted by a fraction. She stepped sideways into the easy banter of the joke without missing the cadence of it.

"I think it would be more cruel of me to let your ego survive intact until tomorrow, when I will defeat you in front of all of them."

"That would be cold of you, Young Mistress."

"I am from the north. The cold is the brand."

He felt the small noise come out of him through his nose. She tilted her head a fraction at the sound, as if she were filing it for later.

"What are you doing right now?"

She asked it with the small directness of a woman who did not waste her breath on social arrangements.

"Walking. No particular destination. Nothing in mind. Going wherever the streets take me."

That was the polite version of the answer. The honest one was that he had been crossing every quarter of Yuncheng since the morning meal with Mira’s attention spread across every conversation in earshot, sweeping for the cadence of an old man’s voice he had heard once through the wooden partition of a stall in the tea house. Master Hu had a face he had not seen and a voice Mira would never miss. The streets of the merchant quarter, the alleys around the eastern gate, the lanes of the herb district, the row of carriage yards near the river. He had walked through them all today.

He kept the honest version to himself.

"By any chance, do you happen to know someone called Master Hu?"

He let it come out as a small aside, the kind a man tossed in to fill space in a conversation, and watched her face for any flicker the name might draw.

She stayed quiet for a beat. Her head tipped half an inch to the right, the small motion of a person actually consulting their memory rather than performing it.

"...No. The name does not ring a bell. Is he someone of importance in Yuncheng?"

"Honestly, I have no idea. I have been trying to find him for the last two days. I would like to put a face to the name."

"Something important?"

"Nothing serious. He is rumored to offer good services. I wanted to see for myself what kind of services."

She accepted the answer without pressing further, which he had expected she would. Su Qingyue had been raised in a sect built on patience, and patience knew the difference between a question worth pursuing and a question that had been politely closed.

He went quiet for a beat longer than the conversation strictly allowed, because Mira had pulled his attention back into the channel between them.

’Today is probably the day she will try something. The semifinal is tomorrow and the window for a second attempt closes the moment I step back onto the stone. I hope Lian delivered the letter to my father this morning. I hope he is staying close to the residence in case anything moves. I told him what I could without putting names down on paper. I just hope he believes it without proof to back it up.’

[ Your father trusts you, Xuan. He saw the cushion move during the inhibitor combat. He has registered the spacing in the tribune. He is a careful man. He will be where he needs to be. ]

’I hope you are right about that one.’

[ I usually am. ]

He came back to the street with the small registration of a man who had spent half a heartbeat somewhere else, and discovered that Su Qingyue had been watching him through the entire pause.

Watching the way a woman watched a man whose attention had drifted off the conversation in a manner she was choosing to interpret unflatteringly.

Color had begun to climb the line of her cheek.

She was, he realized with a pulse of mild horror, blushing.

"Young Master Lin Xuan. Are you all right."

She did not know about Mira. She had no reason to know about Mira. She had no idea that the silent stretch she had just been on the receiving end of had been a private internal conference about her potential and tomorrow’s schedule of attempts on his life.

What she had seen was a man go quiet, fix his attention on her face, and not blink for what had probably been a full ten seconds.

He blinked twice and recovered the line of his face.

"Oh. Sorry. My head went out for a second. You were saying something."

"I was asking whether I could accompany you for the rest of the afternoon."

He let one corner of his mouth lift.

"Hm. My opponent for tomorrow. Is the plan to study me thoroughly under the pretense of company."

"It might be."

"I cannot find a reason to refuse, in that case. I will return the favor."

She inclined her head, the small efficient motion of a Frostmoon Ridge salute, and stepped into pace beside him along the lane.

The afternoon traffic of Yuncheng moved around them.

She walked at the rhythm a woman walked when she had decided that the rhythm of the man beside her was acceptable for the next few hours, and Lin Xuan registered the registration without commenting on it.

Tomorrow they would meet on the polished stone.

This afternoon, evidently, they were going to walk.